Zodra de gevoelstemperatuur boven het vriespunt stijgt, sluit de winteropvang en moeten dakloze mensen een alternatieve slaapplek vinden. Voor Jacek is dat een tent, waarvan hij de specifieke locatie niet bekend wil maken, omdat hij bang is voor pottenkijkers. “Ik ben hier niet veilig.”

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We’re heading over to Livigno shortly for the women’s halfpipe. Team GB’s Zoe Atkin qualified first but there is plenty of competition, not least from China’s Eileen Gu.

Some big news coming out of the 50km women’s cross-country skiing, with Frida Karlsson pulling out. The Swede was the gold meal favourite having won the skiathlon and the 10km intervals, as well as a silver in 4x7.5km relay.

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The government plans to halve the attainment gap in England

The education secretary is asked about the growing anger of the cost of student loans which has escalated since the chancellor’s decision last November to freeze the salary threshold for “plan 2” student loan repayments for three years.

Rachel Reeves said the salary at which plan 2 student loans must be paid back would be frozen at £29,385 for three years starting from next April. It means borrowers will have to pay even more towards their student loans as they benefit from pay rises.

Now I get the problem. I see the issue. In reality, as a government, you have to look at a question of priorities and what you can do and how fast you can do it. Given the shape of what we have in the public finances, this is really hard.

Part of what we’ve seen is that support for children with Send has been treated almost as an entirely separate issue, rather than it being integral to our school system. Lots of children at some point during their school lives will experience some form of challenge, will need extra support.

But the system that we have at the moment… is one that has made it the case that in order to get the support that children need, parents have to fight really hard to get that education, health and care plan. I’ve heard from so many parents just how difficult, how devastating that has been. It can take years. It’s really adversarial.

Yes. We will make sure that children get support much, much more quickly than is the case right now. And the commitment that I give to parents is that when they see all of the documents published tomorrow what they will see is a government that is focused on delivering better outcomes for their children. I am fiercely ambitious for every child in our country.

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HILVERSUM (ANP) - Tv-presentator Koos Postema is op 93-jarige leeftijd overleden. Dat heeft een woordvoerder van zijn familie zondag aan het ANP bekendgemaakt. Postema overleed zaterdag aan de gevolgen van ouderdom in het bijzijn van zijn twee dochters Judith en Ingrid.

Postema werkte bij de publieke omroep onder meer voor de toenmalige VARA, waar hij het programma Klasgenoten presenteerde. Later maakte hij dit programma lange tijd voor Veronica.

peaceful-jp-scenery has added a photo to the pool:

Aizu Painted Candle Festival
会津絵ろうそくまつり

This is the Aizu Painted Candle Festival, which was held at Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle. Aizu painted candles are a traditional craft that has been produced since the Azuchi-Momoyama period, around 1600.

会津若松城で開催されていた会津絵ろうそくまつりです。会津絵ろうそくは安土桃山時代、およそ1600年頃から生産されている伝統工芸品です。

Aizu-wakamatsu city, Fukushima pref, Japan

peaceful-jp-scenery posted a photo:

Aizu Painted Candle Festival
会津絵ろうそくまつり

This is the Aizu Painted Candle Festival, which was held at Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle. Aizu painted candles are a traditional craft that has been produced since the Azuchi-Momoyama period, around 1600.

会津若松城で開催されていた会津絵ろうそくまつりです。会津絵ろうそくは安土桃山時代、およそ1600年頃から生産されている伝統工芸品です。

Aizu-wakamatsu city, Fukushima pref, Japan

peaceful-jp-scenery posted a photo:

Mt.Nishiazuma (2,035m)
西吾妻山

This is a wind passage between the little monsters. I thought the design was interesting.

リトルモンスターの間にできた風の通り道です。造形が面白かったので。

Kita-shiobaramura, Fukushima pref, Japan

BertvB posted a photo:

Besides running tech operations at the UK's Post Office, their interim CTO is also removing and replacing Fujitsu's Horizon system, which Computer Weekly describes as "the error-ridden software that a public inquiry linked to 13 people taking their own lives."

After over 16 years of covering the scandal they'd first discovered back in 2009, Computer Weekly now talks to CTO Paul Anastassi about his plans to finally remove every trace of the Horizon system that's been in use at Post Office branches for over 30 years — before the year 2030:



"There are more than 80 components that make up the Horizon platform, and only half of those are managed by Fujitsu," said Anastassi. "The other components are internal and often with other third parties as well," he added... The plan is to introduce a modern front end that is device agnostic. "We want to get away from [the need] to have a certain device on a certain terminal in your branch. We want to provide flexibility around that...."

Anastassi is not the first person to be given the task of terminating Horizon and ending Fujitsu's contract. In 2015, the Post Office began a project to replace Fujitsu and Horizon with IBM and its technology, but after things got complex, Post Office directors went crawling back to Fujitsu. Then, after Horizon was proved in the High Court to be at fault for the account shortfalls that subpostmasters were blamed and punished for, the Post Office knew it had to change the system. This culminated in the New Branch IT (NBIT) project, but this ran into trouble and was eventually axed. This was before Anastassi's time, and before that of its new top team of executives....
Things are finally moving at pace, and by the summer of this year, two separate contracts will be signed with suppliers, signalling the beginning of the final act for Fujitsu and its Horizon system.
Anastassi has 30 years of IT management experience, the article points out, and he estimates the project will even bring "a considerable cost saving over what we currently pay for Fujitsu."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.