 Adams University is to help address the challenges within UK plant science, by leading a new working group dedicated to training and skills.
In January, the UK Plant Sciences Federation (UKPSF) published a report that identified strategic priorities and recommendations for UK plant science. This has led to the formation of four working groups.
Professor Simon Leather, Professor of Entomology at Harper Adams, has been appointed as the Chair of the Training and Skills Working Group, ensuring that the team behind it fulfils its deliverables within the given timeframe.
As part of this, the group will develop an implementation plan for the UKPSF and plant science community, which will form the basis of the UKPSF’s forward plan for the following 12-months and contribute to longer term objectives.
Professor Leather said: “I am honoured and pleased to have this opportunity to contribute to the UKPSF’s mission to restore plant science teaching, including plant nematology, entomology and plant pathology, to their rightful place in the higher education curriculum.
“Although we here at Harper Adams University offer these subjects, we are almost alone in the UK to do so. It is very worrying that these disciplines are taught at so few other universities in the UK.
As well as the Training and Skills Working Group, teams have also been formed to address areas relating to translation, funding and regulation.
The UKPSF report, UK Plant Science: Current status and future challenges is available to download here.Stretched budgets, rising debts – will Scranton be the next to go bankrupt?
The bankruptcy of three Californian cities in less than a month has reignited concerns over the parlous state of local government finances across the US.
Attention has now shifted to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where municipal employees have had pay slashed to minimum wage levels amid warnings the city government is about to run out of money.
This crisis has some experts wondering if Scranton will follow San Bernadino, Stockton and Mammoth Lakes in a move that will see a sudden cluster of city bankruptcies spread from the west coast to the north-east. That in turn raises the spectre of other cities declaring themselves bust, which would hit an already faltering US recovery.
A variety of factors have caused the problems in California. Stockton was especially hard hit by the foreclosure crisis and the bursting of the real estate bubble. San Bernardino has suffered during the recession, and been hit by revelations that city officials have been faking accounts to mask heavy deficit spending for 13 of the last 16 years.
Scranton, however, is in the middle of a fierce political fight over cost-cutting measures aimed at putting the city's embattled finances on a more even keel.
That has seen Mayor Chris Doherty slash the wages of city employees to the legal minimum, triggering a legal battle with unions, and a reliance on debts to keep the city running. Doherty also aims to raise taxes in the city to help get more revenue flowing into municipal coffers, but that plan is opposed by many other city politicians.
Many other cities across the US, hit by stretched budgets and huge debts, are also attempting furiously to cut costs or raise revenues.
But most experts do not expect the crisis to become a systemic one, even though a few other individual bankruptcies are likely to occur in the coming months.
"I don't expect we are going to see a systemic risk, but we are likely to see a higher number of bankruptcies," said Richard Ciccarone, an expert in municipal debt and managing director of McDonnell Investments.
Eileen Norcross, a senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and an expert on municipal finances, said it was hard to tell yet whether the latest bankruptcies were an isolated cluster or the start of a trend.
"We are seeing stress increasing in California – and in other areas where they face mounting obligations – at the same time as property taxes are declining," she said.
Norcross said that even though the economy is recovering, albeit slowly and from a low level, many of the fundamental issues faced by municipalities remain. She calculates that states and local governments have underfunded pensions by $4tn – a massive shortfallthat many have little hope of recovering.
In 2007 an accounting rule was brought in to make local authorities disclose the size of their healthcare liabilities. Government workers' healthcare plans are believed to be underfunded by $627bn.
"What also concerns me is the financial reporting here," said Norcross, referring to the reports that San Bernadino officials did not file accurate reports.
Norcross said that unless these underlying issues were tackled, a major US city could still go bankrupt. New York went to the brink of bankruptcy in 1975 and recently Detroit has teetered on the edge.
The city narrowly avoided bankruptcy earlier this year and still faces a massive financial crisis. In May mayor Dave Bing announced plans to save money by cutting off street lighting to half the city.
Those sort of drastic cuts are being followed by many other cities and towns across America, often resulting in lay-offs of large amounts of city workers, including police and fireman and the slashing of often basic services.
Last year the struggling city of Camden, New Jersey, laid off nearly half its police officers and almost a third of its firefighters in an effort to bridge a huge budget gap.
Though such measures have a serious cost, some observers do credit them with putting many American cities on a firmer financial footing. Ciccarone said that most of the American cities he tracked via an extensive municipal finances database actually now had greater cash reserves on hand than they did several years ago. "Many cities have built their reserves and cut their budgets," he said.
I’m not saying it’s right. I agree everyone should just be up front and honest, causes less hurt. But that’s rare to find. 

I had someone do this to me. She told me how much she liked me and everything. Within a week I felt something was off and I was the one who had to ask if I needed to back off, and she pretty much said yes.  She was a nice girl, but obviously she struggled with that.Recent media reports have claimed that a bill being considered by the US Congress would allow Jewish organisations to seek compensation for so-called heirless property and make other claims under the 2009 Terezin Declaration. While such fears are entirely imaginary, they represent a good opportunity to examine the Terezin Declaration and the state of its implementation in Poland.
Starting in late 2017, Polish media (including some of the most respected publications) have presented a growing number of dire predictions over the potential effects of the JUST Act (Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today Act of 2017) currently being considered in the US Congress. According to these opinions, the JUST Act would create the legal grounds for various unspecified Jewish organisations to make claims over Jewish-owned property in Poland which was seized following the Second World War. Such interpretations are based on a complete lack of understanding of the issues related to the Terezin Declaration and a failure to gain even a basic familiarity with the provisions of the proposed JUST Act. However, there is no doubt that if the bill becomes law Poland’s reprivatisation issues related to the goals of the Terezin Declaration will fall under close scrutiny of the US Department of State. Unfortunately, Poland’s implementation of its international obligations stemming from its signing of the 2009 Terezin Declaration is far from satisfactory.
The Terezin Declaration was signed on 30 June 2009 by the 46 countries (including Poland) participating in the Prague Holocaust Era Assets Conference. The declaration’s scope includes issues of restitution of Jewish private and communal property (both movable and immovable) seized during the war and in its aftermath, the preservation of Jewish cultural heritage, the social welfare needs of Holocaust survivors and their families, as well as research, educational and archival efforts. As a soft-law instrument of international law, the declaration’s language is general and rather abstract in nature, allowing signatory countries to individually develop the legal instruments to fulfil their obligations.
The guiding principles for national mechanisms for the restitution of Jewish property seized during the war and its aftermath are a key element of the declaration. The document contains a number of guidelines which call for restitution systems to be transparent, simple and expeditious and conducted in a nondiscriminatory manner. They provide for private property claims of former owners (or their heirs or successors) to be resolved through in rem restitution or just compensation (as appropriate). Within this subject matter, the declaration also contains general guidelines for resolution of claims in an order based on the victims’ age or their membership in groups which were subject to persecution during the war and in its aftermath.
As is often the case with instruments of international law, the declaration established a mechanism for monitoring the implementation of the obligations undertaken by the signatory countries. The specially-formed European Shoah Legacy Institute (ESLI) was responsible for the creation of reports analysing the signatories’ fulfilment of declaration obligations. After publishing several country-specific reports, as well as 2017’s final comprehensive report on the implementation of the declaration obligations, the ESLI was wound up (read about Wardyński lawyers’ participation in creating the report). The ESLI concluded its operations despite the fact that the declaration’s goals have yet to be met and their implementation by signatory countries remains unsatisfactory.
In light of the failure to fulfil the Terezin Declaration’s goals and the conclusion of operations by the ESLI in 2017, efforts have been made to shift the responsibility for monitoring of the implementation of the declaration’s goals to a branch of the US federal government. This was the origin of the JUST Act bill (S. 447) which was unanimously passed by the US Senate on 12 December 2017.