Washington
Top British Diplomat Cameron Gets ‘Snubbed’ in Washington
British Foreign Affairs Secretary David Cameron during a two-day visit didn’t meet with a White House official and anybody in the lower legislature chamber of the House of Representatives where a bill for Ukraine funding has stalled for nearly two months.
The purpose of his visit was to offer a “plea” to continue US support for Ukraine as it withstands an all-out onslaught by invading Russian forces.
Britain’s former prime minister met with his counterpart Antony Blinken and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as is customary to speak with the political opposition by visiting British envoys.
However, President Joe Biden’s top foreign policy official, Jake Sullivan cancelled a meeting and instead held a phone call with the British diplomat.
A meeting was held with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Cameron didn’t get to meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has for 60 days sat idle on a Senate funding bill that includes more than $60 billion for Kyiv.
“We know what works, we know what they [Ukrainians] need, and we know what is right for us,” Cameron said at a joint press availability with Blinken on April 9. “We know that if we give the Ukrainians the support they deserve, they can win this war.”
The reception Cameron received in Washington was underwhelming, Peter Dickinson, the British publisher of Business Ukraine Magazine told the Kyiv Post.
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The visit, during which Ukraine signed a 10-year bilateral security deal with Latvia, comes after Moscow launched a barrage of aerial attacks, targeting energy facilities across Ukraine.
Cameron’s visit “was a failure, it was an embarrassment, he was frankly snubbed essentially,” he said. “He didn’t get the key meetings with the key people…the message was quite clear that this is purely a domestic affair, it looked bad for Britain, it looked bad from an optic point of view.”
His visit came as Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is being surgically destroyed by Russian aerial attacks amid air-defense shortages. Kyiv’s forces have had to ration weaponry and is running short of manpower.
America’s top US general in Europe, Christopher Cavoli, told a House Armed Services Committee on April 11 that Russia currently enjoys a five-to-one- ratio in artillery against Ukraine. In the coming weeks Moscow could increase that ratio to ten-to-one.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Kyiv has been mostly reliant on US military support, which has mostly dried up.
“They’re [Ukrainians] are mostly dependent this year on us,” Gen. Cavoli told the House committee.
The last Congressional funding bill for Ukraine was passed in 2022 and included $113 billion in security and financial aid to Ukraine, of which, $67 billion was allocated toward defense needs.
Prior to Cameron’s truncated Capitol Hill swing, he met with former President Trump.
The latter’s campaign summary noted that both parties discussed “the upcoming US and UK elections, policy matters specific to Brexit, the need for NATO countries to meet their defense spending requirements, and ending the killing in Ukraine.”
Washington
Washington Spirit goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury announces she’s pregnant
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USWNT forward Trinity Rodman signed a three-year deal with the NWSL’s Washington Spirit. The deal makes Rodman the highest-paid female footballer in the world.
unbranded – Sport
Washington Spirit goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury has announced that she and her husband Matt are expecting a baby in July.
The couple made the announcement in a video on the Spirit’s social media channels, holding a baby goalkeeper jersey on the pitch at Audi Field.
Kingsbury becomes the most recent Spirit star to go on maternity leave, following defender Casey Krueger, midfielder Andi Sullivan and forward Ashley Hatch.
Sullivan gave birth to daughter Millie in July, while Hatch welcomed her son Leo in January.
Krueger announced she was pregnant with her second child in October.
Kingsbury has served as the Spirit’s starting goalkeeper since 2018, and has been named the NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year twice (2019 and 2021).
The 34-year-old has two caps with the U.S. women’s national team, and was named to the 2023 World Cup roster.
The club captain will leave a major void for the Spirit, who have finished as NWSL runner-up in back-to-back seasons.
Sandy MacIver and Kaylie Collins are expected to compete for the starting role while Kingsbury is on maternity leave.
The Spirit kick off their 2026 campaign on March 13 against the Portland Thorns.
Washington
Washington state board awards Yakima $985,600 loan for Sixth Avenue project design
YAKIMA, Wash. — Yakima could soon take a major step toward redesigning Sixth Avenue after the Washington State Public Works Board awarded the city a $985,600 loan.
The loan was approved for the design engineering phase of the Sixth Avenue project. The funding can also be used along Sixth Avenue for utility replacement and updated ADA use.
The Yakima City Council must decide whether to accept the award. If the council accepts it, the city’s engineering work will move forward with the design of Sixth Avenue.
The cost of installing trolley lines is excluded from the plan. The historic trolleys would need to raise the funds required to add trolley lines.
The award is scheduled to be discussed during next week’s City Council meeting.
Washington
Microsoft promises more AI investments at University of Washington
Microsoft will ramp up its investment in the University of Washington.
Brad Smith, the company’s president, made the announcement at a press conference with University of Washington President Robert Jones on Tuesday.
That means hiring more UW graduates as interns at Microsoft, he said.
And he said all students, faculty, and researchers should have access to free, or at least deeply-discounted, AI.
“ Some of it is compute that Microsoft is donating, and some of it is pursuant to an agreement where, believe me, we give the University of Washington probably the best pricing that anybody’s gonna find anywhere,” Smith said. He assured the small group of reporters present that it would be “many millions of dollars of additional computational resources.”
The announcement today didn’t include any specific numbers.
But Smith said Microsoft has already invested $165 million in the UW over several decades.
He pointed to Jones’ vision to spur “radical collaborations with businesses and communities to advance positive change,” and eliminate “any artificial barriers between the university and the communities it serves.”
Microsoft’s goal is for AI to help UW researchers solve some of the world’s biggest problems without introducing new ones.
At Tuesday’s announcement, several research students were present to demonstrate how AI supports their work.
Amelia Keyser-Gibson is an environmental scientist at the UW. She’s using AI to analyze photographs of vines, to find which adapt best to climate change.
It’s a paradox: AI produces carbon emissions. At the same time, it’s also a new tool to help reduce them.
So how do those things square for Keyser-Gibson?
“ That’s a great question, and honestly, I don’t know the answer to that,” she said. “I’m highly aware that there’s a lot of environmental impact of using AI, but what I can say is that this has allowed us to make research innovations that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.”
“If we had had to manually annotate every single image that would’ve been an undergrad doing that for hours,” Keyser-Gibson continued. “And we didn’t have the budget. We didn’t have the manpower to do that.”
“AI exists. If we don’t use it as researchers, we’re gonna fall behind.”
Microsoft reports on its own carbon emissions. But like most AI companies, it doesn’t reveal everything.
That’s one reason another UW student named Zhihan Zhang is using AI to estimate how much energy AI is using.
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