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Mitchell Young While, as the name of this blog reflects, knowledge has become a central concern in European policymaking internally, it has not made the same inroads into the EU's external policy discourses. This neglect of knowledge in the field of international relations is not limited to the EU, but given the European policy context, […]
The post Knowledge Power Europe appeared first on Europe of Knowledge.

A federal judge has ruled that Trumbull County, Ohio, officials violated the rights of Niki Frenchko, the only Republican member of the county Board of Commissioners, when they had her arrested during a commissioners' meeting. Frenchko was arrested for criticizing the sheriff, Paul Monroe, for a death in the jail. She was charged with trying…

Achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, a plan to which all our leading political parties are committed- except Reform- will require large scale use of low carbon energy sources, including nuclear power. Various studies confirm what is obvious: that nuclear power has a significant role to play in meeting increasing world energy demand and keeping carbon emissions low. However, that means that nuclear power will have to become a much more significant part of the energy mix than it is today. The UK government reckons that the country needs to increase its nuclear power capacity to 24 gigawatts by 2050 to meet its net zero targets. That would make it about a quarter of projected electricity demand, compared to about a seventh today.Today's large-scale nuclear power plants are difficult, time-consuming and costly to build. But enterprising companies such as Rolls-Royce propose much smaller-scale plants — Small Modular Reactors or SMRs. They promise be much lower cost and much quicker to build. Even so, there is a lot of opposition to new nuclear construction (or indeed any sort of construction) from local residents; and the UK's highly restrictive planning rules don't make it any easier. (Nor, indeed, do the UK's energy regulators.)Maybe there is a solution, though: floating nuclear power plants. We site wind turbines offshore, so why not site nuclear power plants offshore too? Of course, it sounds like a cross between science fiction and fantasy, because we still have this idea that nuclear power plants need to be huge. But they don't. Nuclear energy has been used in ships of 70 years. There are today 162 nuclear-powered vessels floating on or below the surface of the sea. Nuclear energy is used to power submarines and icebreakers, allowing them to remain operational for very long periods. So no, it is neither science fiction nor fantasy, and marine engineers are actively working on the proposal. Last August, academics from King's College London delivered two workshops on floating nuclear power plants (FNPPs), in Jakarta and Manila. And the prominent marine engineer Stuart Bannantyne has also raised the same prospect in Australia. It's a good place for it, since 92% of Australians live near the coast or by rivers. But the same is true of many countries.Already, some countries have floating diesel- or gas-powered power stations in ports. The Russians were the first, in 2019, says Bannantyne. They placed a 70mw floating plant in the remote town of Vilyuchinsk. Since then the idea has spread. In November 2023, the International Atomic Energy Agency held an international conference on the idea of floating SMRs, looking to provide clean heat and power for remote coastal locations (and to replace carbon-based generators). The conference discussed all aspects of the option: licencing, regulation, safety, security and so on. Singapore, which suffers a lack of land space, is already thinking about the prospect in practical terms. A US shipping company is developing the concept of micro reactors on ships for shore-side locations. Floating reactors might even be a way to get power back to war-torn states once the shooting stops.It is unlikely that floating nuclear power plants will replace onshore generation. But for remote locations and in times of trouble — well, watch this space.Read Stuart Bannatyne's article in Spectator Australia. https://www.spectator.com.au/author/stuart-ballantyne/

Robert Farley has replied to my recent post on the obsolescence of naval power. Unlike our previous exchange, a pile-on where I was (as he points out) in a minority of one, Robert's tone is mostly civil this time, and I intend to reciprocate. Our disagreements have narrowed a fair way. On many points, it's […]

Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, chats with David in New York about growing up in Ireland, how she went from a sports reporter at Yale to writing a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on U.S. foreign policy, and her take on the Obama administration's approach to conflicts in Libya, Syria, and elsewhere.
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Samantha Power, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, joins David to talk about the journey from her childhood in Ireland to the halls of the U.N. — and the trials she faced along the way. She shares the experiences that compelled her to become a Balkan War correspondent, how what she saw there inspired her to author a Pulitzer-prize winning book on genocide, and the human rights causes that drew her to then-senator Barack Obama.
She also shares her thoughts on the hollowing out of the State Department, Trump's attempt to politicize service officers and institutions, U.S. credibility and the state of our global alliances, and what an emboldened Putin and Erdogan means for the global order.
Her new memoir, The Education of an Idealist, documents this journey—and the lessons she picked up along the way.
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Since 2019, anti-Islam non-parliamentary activists have explored the limits to freedom of speech in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands through their provocative Quran desecration acts. Using the non-parliamentarian arena to exercise power from a position of minority, the far-right activist Rasmus Paludan and his party were able to effectively push the Danish constitutional boundaries, while at the same time affecting the geopolitical situation. While the protests so far only have had legal repercussions regarding blasphemy and freedom of speech in Denmark, it clearly demonstrates that non-parliamentary far-right activists also hold certain legislative powers.

Like millions of other people around the world, I have spent much of the past few weeks playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TotK), the nineteenth installment in Nintendo's widely acclaimed series.

Emmerson Mnangagwa was re-elected as president in an election that has been called "blatant and massive fraud" by the opposition.

Does power corrupt or are corrupt people drawn to power? Are tyrants the products of bad systems or are they just bad people? And why do we give power to awful people?

The Cross-Government and Public Sector Data Science Community provides regular opportunities for people in the public sector, with an interest in data science, to connect with their peers, learn new skills and collaborate. This autumn, we are hosting the first …

In addition to taking steps to revitalize religious practice, we need to be asking why so many older generations decided to abandon the faith and the communities that they had when they were raising their children.
The post The Power of the Sy­­nagogue Tradition appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Pubs are critical third spaces in the United Kingdom and have been for centuries. It is hard to overstate their import to community life as they have historically been an integral part of a place's history and identity. Yet now more drinking occurs at home than at the pub, a strong indicator of the troubled state of communal health in the UK.
The post The Power of the Humble Pub appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Contributor(s): Ken Benoit, Andrew Murray, Seeta Peña Gangaradhan, Alison Powell, Bernhard Von Stengel | Computer algorithms shape our lives and increasingly control our future. They have crept into virtually every aspect of modern life and are making life-changing choices on our behalf, often without us realising. But how much power should we give to them and have we let things go too far? Joanna Bale talks to Ken Benoit, Andrew Murray, Seeta Peña Gangaradhan, Alison Powell and Bernhard Von Stengel.
Research links: Hello World by Hannah Fry;
Information Technology Law: The Law and Society by Andrew Murray;
Explanations as Governance? Investigating practices of explanation in algorithmic system design by Alison Powell (forthcoming).

Since at least the 1980s, private actors and market-based mechanisms have played an increasingly important role in the provision of public goods and services and the pursuit of public policy objectives in general. A market approach is also widely used in the field of public health. In effect, the PPP approach, as illustrated by COVAX, can work to structurally protect the interests of (a majority) of the high-income countries. While PPPs in global health may do a lot of good things, their private law, contractualist nature and structures safeguard formal state sovereignty and voluntarism, predominantly benefitting high-income donor countries