AI in Local Government Practice

UK: Artificial intelligence programmes being piloted at Stockton Council are "fundamentally changing" how staff work, bosses have claimed.

The local authority is one of 25 testing AI systems which transcribe and summarise meetings.

Council officials said the pilot had already drastically reduced paperwork and saved staff time.

Public sector union Unison urged local authorities to adopt AI to help staff and reduce working hours, but not as a means to cut jobs.

The two systems being tried out in Stockton are Minute and Magic Notes which can record, transcribe and summarise meetings attended by up to 40 people.

Templates such as action plans or internal reports can also be completed automatically.

The council's deputy leader, Labour's Paul Rowling, said: "Speaking with the staff, it is fundamentally changing their day-to-day job.

"They can spend much less time doing admin and much more time delivering those public services that our staff are dedicated to."

Corinne Moore, the council's digital and website development manager, said it had reduced staff workload.

"One example is in public protection," she said.

"Some of the meetings in there take a significant amount of time and someone would have to transcribe that entire meeting by hand.

"Being able to record it has taken that time down from three hours of transcription to half an hour."

'Upskilling staff'

Unison's AI policy lead Kate Jones said many local authority workers were benefiting from artificial intelligence systems, but there was concern over the potential for job losses.

"If it is used, it needs to be used for the benefit of public services and to improve the working lives of workers," she said.

"There are definitely workers out there who are really concerned for their jobs.

"It is really important that any introduction of a transformative technology is accompanied by a serious plan for reskilling and redeployment."

Rowling said the council was not intending to use it to reduce staff numbers.

"We see it as a way of upskilling our staff and improving their skills to make them ready for the future," he said.

"We certainly don't see it as a cost cutting or job cutting exercise."

- Author: David Macmillan, BBC

Spain Records Temperature of 46C

A heatwave continues to grip large parts of Europe, with authorities in many countries issuing health warnings amid searing temperatures.

Southern Spain is the worst-affected region, with temperatures in the mid-40s Celsius recorded in Seville and neighbouring areas.

A new heat record for June of 46C was set on Saturday in the town of El Granado, according to Spain's national weather service, which also said this month is on track to be the hottest June on record.

Red heat warnings are in force in parts of Portugal, Italy and Croatia, with numerous amber warnings covering areas of Spain, France, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Hungary, Serbia, Slovenia and Switzerland.

- Author: Danai Nesta Kupemba, BBC

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SCIENCE LAB SCORES : NEW SOLAR ANGLE

'' NO ice sheets at this south pole'' : Spacecraft and specialized telescope have been studying the sun closely for decades, probing the secrets of its spots, flares and corona.

The European Space Agency recently released the first clear images of the sun's south pole, which were captured in late March by its Solar Orbiter spacecraft.

'' It's the first time ever that humanity has had an image of the poles of the sun,'' said Carole Mundell, director of science for the. European Space Agency. '' It's a wonderful achievement.''

Scientists have had vague glimpses of the sun's poles before. However, those side-on views have been akin to '' looking through grass,'' said Mathew Owens, a space physicist at the University of  Reading in England, who added that it had been hard to work out what was happening at the poles and how they differed from other regions of the star.

By studying its polar extremes, scientists hope to gain new insights into the sun and how it behaves. And the best is yet to come later this year, humans will get our first images of the sun's north pole from Solar Orbiter.

The $550 million Solar Orbiter, launched on Feb 10, 2020, into an orbit that caused it to fly by Venus repeatedly.

These encounters give the spacecraft a gravitational kick, enabling it to push itself out of the plane of orbit that the planets follow around the sun and into a higher angle to view the poles.

The Publishing continues to Part [2]. The World Students Society thanks Jonathan O' Callaghan.

Headline, July 01 2025/ CLIMATE : ''' OCEANS HEAT OCCULT '''

CLIMATE : 

''' OCEANS HEAT OCCULT '''

'' IF WE UNDERSTAND HOW GLOBAL warming is affecting extreme events - that is essential information to try to anticipate what's going on - what's next, '' said Marta Marcos, a physicist at the University of the Balearic Islands in Spain.

Dr. Marcos was the lead author of a recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that found that climate change has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of marine heat waves in recent decades.

OCEAN HEAT WAVES SPREAD. High surface temperatures affect marine life, weather and even global sea levels. In recent decades, the oceans have warmed. Marine heat waves, once rare events, have become more common.

One particularly intense event, known as '' the Blob,''  lasted years and devastated plankton populations, starving millions of fish and seabirds and damaging commercial fishing.

Recently, his temperatures have persisted. In January 2024, the share of the ocean surface experiencing a heat wave topped 40 percent.

Unusual heat waves have occurred in all of the major ocean basins around the planet in recent years. And some of these events have become so intense that scientists have coined a new term : super marine heat waves.

The seas off the coasts of Britain and Ireland experienced an unusually intense marine heat wave, one of the longest on record, starting in April, and the temperature rise happened much earlier in the year than usual. Australia and its iconic coral reefs were recently struck by heat waves on two coasts.

Scientists define marine heat waves in different ways. But it's clear that as the planet's climate changes, the oceans are being fundamentally altered, as they absorb excess heat trapped in the atmosphere from greenhouse gases, which are emitted when fossil fuels are burned.

Hotter oceans are causing drastic changes to marine life, sea levels and weather patterns.

Some of the most visible casualties of ocean warming have been coral reefs. When ocean temperatures rise too much, corals can bleach and die.

About 84% of reefs worldwide experienced bleaching-level heat stress at some point between January 2023 and March 2025, according to a recent report.

Last year, the warmest on record, sea levels rose faster than scientists expected. Research showed that most of that rise came from what is known as thermal expansion, the expanding of the water as it warms, not from melting glaciers and ice sheets.

EXCESS HEAT in the oceans can also affect weather patterns, making hurricanes more likely to rapidly intensify and become more destructive. In the southwest Pacific, last year's ocean heat contributed to a record-breaking streak of tropical cyclones hitting the Philippines.

THE LOSSES : Some of the earliest research on mass die-offs associated with marine heat waves,  before there was a name for them, came from the Mediterranean, which has been warming three to five times faster than the ocean at large.

Joaquim Garrabou, a marine conservation ecologist at the Institut de Ciencies del Mar in Barcelona, started studying these events after witnessing a die-off of sponges and coral in 1999.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Oceans and Climate Change, continues. The World Students Society thanks Delger Erdenessanaa and Harry Stevens.

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