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SINGAPORE - Each of the more than 1,900 pre-schools here will have to appoint an inclusion coordinator among their staff from the second half of 2023 as part of efforts to better support children with developmental needs. These coordinators will receive training and will work with other pre-school educators to identify children with potential developmental needs for assessment, and ensure they receive early intervention support. "For children with developmental needs, it is paramount to identify needs early and provide the necessary support," said Minister of State for Social and Family Development Sun Xueling during the debate on her ministry's budget on Friday (March 5). "Our children are precious and we must create environments where they can thrive, and they can feel included and accepted," she added. She also announced the ministry's other efforts to support inclusion, such as the expansion of the Development Support-Learning Support (DS-LS) and Development Support Plus … [Read more...] about Budget debate: More support for inclusive education and mother tongue language teaching in pre-schools

The Covid-19 recovery has cost the UK £407 billion, Rishi Sunak admitted today in his Budget speech. The Chancellor announced an additional £65 billion in spending on the recovery - extending furlough and other support for firms and workers through to September. He announced the creation of eight "free ports" - a scheme popular with Tory MPs to create "tax havens" within the UK. Duty on alcohol and fuel will both be frozen. And the minimum wage will increase by 19p an hour to £8.91 for over-23s. And he announced the creation of a Treasury branch office in Darlington - near to his own Richmond constituency. Describing the battering the economy had suffered during the Covid-19 pandemic, he said the forecasts show that this year the Government has borrowed a "record" £355 billion, the equivalent of 17% of the UK's national income - and the highest figure since World War II. He told MPs: "Next year, as we continue our unprecedented response to this crisis, borrowing is … [Read more...] about Budget 2021: £407billion cost of Covid unveiled in grim figures from Rishi Sunak

TikTok has officially launched a new Q&A feature that’s designed to help creators answer questions from their fans. It’s available on both pre-recorded and live videos, and works by having viewers mark their comment as a question. Creators can then either answer questions via a text comment or video reply. In live videos, presenters can select questions from a dedicated menu, and then choose to highlight them during live responses. In video replies, Q&A comments can be added as stickers, which link back to the video where the question was originally asked. A new section in a creator’s profile aggregates all their Q&As into one place as well as serving as another place for viewers to ask questions. @tiktok The new Q&A feature is now here to help you ask or answer any questions. Try it out now! ♬ original sound - TikTok TikTok says the feature is available for Creator Accounts, which anyone can switch to via the “Manage account” option in settings. “To … [Read more...] about TikTok is making it easier for creators to answer their fans’ questions

Today let’s talk about a comprehensive new report on election integrity, and the particularly low marks it gave to one platform in particular. I. The 283-page report, which was published today, is called “ The Long Fuse: Misinformation and the 2020 Election .” It is the final work of a coalition of some of the most respected names in platform analysis in academia and the nonprofit world: the Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, Graphika, and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. The report builds on work that the partnership did leading up to and after November to identify and counter false narratives about the 2020 US presidential election. It describes its goals this way: The EIP’s primary goals were to: (1) identify mis- and disinformation before it went viral and during viral outbreaks, (2) share clear and accurate counter-messaging, and (3) document the specific misinformation actors, transmission … [Read more...] about How YouTube failed the 2020 election test

Data belonging to 580,000 Singapore Airlines' frequent flyer members have been compromised in a cybersecurity attack that originally hit air transport communications and IT vendor, SITA. The incident marks the second time in a week that an airline has reported a data breach, which appears also to be the result of the attack targeting SITA. While not a customer of SITA, Singapore Airlines (SIA) had shared a "restricted" set of data as a member of the Star Alliance group, the airline said in a statement late-Thursday. This was necessary to facilitate verification of membership tier status and provide customers of other member airlines the relevant benefits while they travelled. Such data would reside on the passenger service systems of member airlines, SIA said. The national carrier did not specify when it was informed by SITA about the breach, which impacted the latter's passenger service system servers. Global pandemic opening up can of security worms Caught by … [Read more...] about Singapore Airlines frequent flyer members hit in third-party data security breach