After staff cuts, the National Weather
Service is hiring again
(NYTimes) — After losing nearly 600 employees to layoffs and retirements as part of the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce, the National Weather Service is planning to hire to “stabilize” the department, a spokesperson said. Erica Grow Cei, a weather service spokesperson, said “a targeted number” of permanent positions would soon be advertised. Tom Fahy, legislative director for the union that represents weather service employees, said the department had been granted an exemption to the administration’s governmentwide hiring freeze to hire 126 people, including meteorologists, hydrologists, physical scientists and electronics technicians.
Caught between two Wests: new global
divide runs straight through Poland
(NYTimes) — Tugged between two poles of Western power — the Washington of President Donald Trump and Brussels as a champion of liberal democracy — Poland tilted toward the Trumpian model. Karol Nawrocki, an ally of Poland’s populist former governing party, Law and Justice, defeated the liberal mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Trzaskowski, in the presidential runoff held Sunday. The result, announced Monday, will have little immediate impact on Poland’s domestic or foreign policies, which the president does not control. But the election highlights a broader struggle faced by Europe. Battles have raged over divisive issues, and national sovereignty has become a rallying cry on the right.
German border police barred from rejecting some asylum-seekers without a review
(NYTimes) —The German border police can no longer reject asylum-seekers who arrive from neighboring European Union countries without investigating their claims, a Berlin court ruled Monday, dealing a blow to Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s attempts to control such migration. The ruling came in response to a legal complaint filed by three Somali refugees who were sent back to Poland shortly after German police barred them from entering at the eastern border last month, following new directives from the government. It remained unclear to what degree the ruling Monday would stymie plans to limit the number of arrivals; the government is also suspending a program that lets asylum-seekers sponsor their families.
UK faces most serious military threat since cold war, Starmer says
(NYTimes) — Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain vowed Monday to bring his country to “war-fighting readiness,” announcing plans to build up to 12 new attack submarines and invest billions of pounds in weapons, to fortify for a world caught between a hostile Russia and a retrenching United States. The ambitious rearmament is part of a strategic defense review by the government, which laid out the threatening new landscape and called for increased production of drones and the stockpiling of more munitions and equipment. The review was given fresh urgency amid growing evidence of President Donald Trump’s weakened commitment to European security and his ambivalent and, at times, ingratiating attitude toward President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
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