Mayors welcome £6.9bn local transport boost – but warned of HS2 ‘sting in the tail’
England’s regional mayors have welcomed a £6.9bn spending boost for local transport – but they are also being warned of a “massive sting in the tail” to come from Chancellor Rishi Sunak.
At next week’s budget and spending review, Mr Sunak is expected to announce £5.7bn will be put into transport settlements for city regions, as well as £1.2bn of new funding for bus services.
The Treasury is promising the cash will boost productivity through train and station upgrades and the expansion of tram networks in cities outside of London.
The funding appears to be a victory for Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, who has been campaigning for government money to help create a London-style transport service for his city region.
However, a former government infrastructure tsar has accused Mr Sunak of putting “the good news before the bad news” as they predicted the chancellor would also scrap a major part of the HS2 rail project and scale down other big infrastructure schemes.
As part of the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements, £1.07bn will be allocated for projects in Greater Manchester, £830m for West Yorkshire, £570m for South Yorkshire, £1.05bn for the West Midlands, £310m for Tees Valley, £540m for the West of England, and £710m for the Liverpool city region.
Mr Burnham welcomed an “important first step” towards a London-style transport system for Greater Manchester and said the government was “listening to the case” that his city region was making.
But the Labour politician added that “infrastructure investment alone will not make levelling up feel real to the people of Greater Manchester – that will only happen when the frequency and coverage of bus services are increased and fares are lowered to London levels”.
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has been campaigning for a London-style transport network
Andy Street, the Conservative mayor of the West Midlands, hailed the “largest single transport sum we have ever received” and promised “some truly game-changing schemes” such as more Metro lines and train stations, new bus routes and electric vehicle charging points.
His fellow Tory regional politician, Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen, said the cash was “another example” of the government’s commitment to being “serious about levelling up”.
He promised that “every part of our transport network in the region will be touched, with our critical practical schemes such as major station renovation and road improvements sitting alongside funding for more innovative projects like low-emission vehicles and smart traffic lights”.
The Treasury said the local settlements will enable projects such as new carriages for Greater Manchester’s Metrolink, an expansion of tram networks in South Yorkshire and the West Midlands, and battery packs for Merseyrail trains to extend its network.
And Mr Sunak’s department is also promising the £1.2bn pot for bus services will improve infrastructure, fares and services outside of London through the delivery of integrated fares and ticketing, as well as extra services and new bus priority measures to speed up journeys.
Those places benefiting from the money will be selected in the coming months, according to the Treasury.
“Great cities need great transport and that is why we’re investing billions to improve connections in our city regions as we level up opportunities across the country,” Mr Sunak said.
“There is no reason why somebody working in the North and Midlands should have to wait several times longer for their bus or train to arrive in the morning compared to a commuter in the capital.
“This transport revolution will help redress that imbalance as we modernise our local transport networks so they are fit for our great cities and those people who live and work in them.”
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However, former Labour transport secretary Lord Adonis – who went on to lead the UK National Infrastructure Commission under David Cameron and Theresa May – forecast that Mr Sunak’s announcement of local transport funding would come before the scrapping of the eastern leg of HS2 between Birmingham and Leeds.
He told Sky News: “The truth is the government is announcing a pretty good deal for local transport because they think all politics is local and having bus schemes, local train and local tram schemes is going to be popular.
“And I welcome that because we do need much better local transport and we particularly need it in the Midlands and the North so it’s more like London.
“However, what they’re not announcing now is the massive sting in the tail which is the cancellation of the eastern leg of HS2 and a big scaling down of the project to link up the northern cities from Liverpool and Manchester, through to Bradford and Leeds and then Newcastle in the north of England.”
Lord Adonis added the “big, strategic, backbone” transport infrastructure schemes were “just as important” as local schemes “if we’re going to level up this country properly”.
Labour’s shadow transport secretary Jim McMahon said: “If ministers were serious about ensuring towns and cities of the North are better connected, they’d be delivering to HS2 to Leeds and Northern Powerhouse Rail.
“Both these projects are critical to addressing the climate crisis and transforming the economies of the North and Midlands.
“If ministers go back on their word, communities will feel rightly betrayed.”
Earlier this month, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps signalled the eastern leg of HS2 could be scrapped in favour of other transport spending as he spoke of how the government should “not blindly follow some plan invented 15 to 20 years ago which no longer benefits people”.
Only 20 of the 181 Bitcoin service providers registered with El Salvador’s central bank are operational, with the rest failing to meet the country’s requirements under its Bitcoin Law.
Local media outlet El Mundo cited data from the Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador, showing that 11% of the service providers are operational. According to the central bank’s database, the rest of the providers are classified as non-operational.
The data showed that at least 22 non-operational providers have failed to meet most of the country’s Bitcoin Law requirements, which mandate that providers implement stringent supervision of their financial systems.
Most of El Salvador’s Bitcoin service providers are non-operational
El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law requires providers to maintain an Anti-Money Laundering (AML) program, keep records that accurately reflect the company’s assets, liabilities and equity and have a tailored cybersecurity program depending on the nature of its services.
The data showed that 89% of the registered providers have failed to meet some of these obligations to be classified as operational.
Still, a few firms have satisfied the legal criteria, including the state-backed Chivo Wallet and companies including Crypto Trading & Investment and Fintech Américas.
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El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment
In 2021, El Salvador became the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender along with the US dollar. This move made Bitcoin integral to El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s economic strategy.
However, the Central American country recently signed a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a $1.4 billion loan in exchange for rolling back some of its Bitcoin-related efforts. Under the agreement, taxes will be paid in US dollars and public institutions will limit their use of Bitcoin.
On March 3, the IMF asked the country to stop its public sector Bitcoin buys. Still, Bukele said the government will continue to purchase Bitcoin, seemingly contradicting its IMF deal.
The IMF deal prompted speculation about whether the country would rescind Bitcoin’s status as legal tender. John Dennehy, an El Salvador-based Bitcoin activist and educator, said in an X Space with Cointelegraph that a rollback law changing Bitcoin’s legal status is set to take effect on April 30.
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Tech giant Meta has been given the green light from the European Union’s data regulator to train its artificial intelligence models using publicly shared content across its social media platforms.
Posts and comments from adult users across Meta’s stable of platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, along with questions and queries to the company’s AI assistant, will now be used to improve its AI models, Meta said in an April 14 blog post.
The company said it’s “important for our generative AI models to be trained on a variety of data so they can understand the incredible and diverse nuances and complexities that make up European communities.”
Meta has a green light from data regulators in the EU to train its AI models using publicly shared content on social media. Source: Meta
“That means everything from dialects and colloquialisms, to hyper-local knowledge and the distinct ways different countries use humor and sarcasm on our products,” it added.
However, people’s private messages with friends, family and public data from EU account holders under the age of 18 are still off limits, according to Meta.
People can also opt out of having their data used for AI training through a form that Meta says will be sent in-app, via email and “easy to find, read, and use.”
EU regulators paused tech firms’ AI training plans
Last July, Meta delayed training its AI using public content across its platforms after privacy advocacy group None of Your Business filed complaints in 11 European countries, which saw the Irish Data Protection Commission (IDPC) request a rollout pause until a review was conducted.
The complaints claimed Meta’s privacy policy changes would have allowed the company to use years of personal posts, private images, and online tracking data to train its AI products.
Meta says it has now received permission from the EU’s data protection regulator, the European Data Protection Commission, that its AI training approach meets legal obligations, and the company continues to engage “constructively with the IDPC.”
“This is how we have been training our generative AI models for other regions since launch,” Meta said.
“We’re following the example set by others, including Google and OpenAI, both of which have already used data from European users to train their AI models.”
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An Irish data regulator opened a cross-border investigation into Google Ireland Limited last September to determine whether the tech giant followed EU data protection laws while developing its AI models.
X faced similar scrutiny and agreed to stop using personal data from users in the EU and European Economic Area last September. Previously, X used this data to train its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok.
The EU launched its AI Act in August 2024, establishing a legal framework for the technology that included data quality, security and privacy provisions.
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South Korea is expanding a ban on digital asset firms’ applications servicing its citizens. On April 11, the country’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) announced that 14 crypto exchanges were blocked on the Apple store. Among the affected exchanges are KuCoin and MEXC.
The report, which was made public on April 14, says the banned exchanges were allegedly operating as unregistered overseas virtual asset operators. The report also states that the Financial Information Analysis Institution (FIU) will continue to promote the blocking of the apps and internet sites of such operators to prevent money laundering and user damage.
The request to block applications on the Apple Store comes after Google Play blocked access to several unregistered exchanges on March 26. KuCoin and MEXC were also targeted during the blocking of the Google Play apps. The FSC published a list of 22 unregistered platforms operating in the country, with 17 of them already blocked on Google’s marketplace.
The 17 crypto exchanges blocked on Google Play. Source: FSC
According to the FSC report, users will not be able to download the apps on the Apple Store, while existing users will not be able to update the apps. The FSC notes that “unreported business activities are criminal punishment matters” with penalties of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to 50 million won ($35,200).
FIU considers sanctions against unregistered VASPs
On March 21, South Korean publication Hankyung reported that the FIU and the FSC were considering sanctions against crypto exchanges operating in the country without registration with local regulators. The sanctions included blocking access to the companies’ apps.
In South Korea, operators of crypto sales, brokerage, management, and storage must report to the FIU. Failure to comply with registration and reports is subject to penalties and sanctions.
Related: South Korea reports first crypto ‘pump and dump’ case under new law
The latest sanctions come as crypto is reaching a “saturation point” in South Korea. As of March 31, crypto exchange users in the country passed 16 million — equivalent to over 30% of the population. Industry officials predict that the number could surpass 20 million by the end of 2025.
Over 20% of South Korean public officials hold cryptocurrencies, with the total amount reaching $9.8 million on March 27. The assets varied and included Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), XRP (XRP), and Dogecoin (DOGE).
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