While you might know Kagi best as the paid competitor to Google's ever-worsening search product, the company launched its Kagi Translate tool back in 2024, saying at the time that it was a 'simply better' competitor to tools like Google Translate and DeepL. At launch, the company said Kagi Translate 'uses a combination of LLMs, selecting and optimizing the best output for each task,' a fact that 'can occasionally lead to quirks that we're actively working to resolve.'
On Feb. 11, 1975, Margaret Thatcher was elected leader of Britain's opposition Conservative Party, a prelude to her eventual rise to prime minister in 1979. Also on this date: In 1847, American inventor Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio. In 1937, a six-week-old sit-down strike against General Motors ended, with the company agreeing to recognize and negotiate with the United Auto Workers union.
Rightwing populism in particular relies on an ever-expanding list of enemies from urban elites to benefit claimants, immigrants to deep-state bureaucrats, diversity officers to leftwing radicals, net zero zealots to mild liberals yet this list always contains a striking omission.
My reforms changed the welfare system to make work pay and brought workless households to an all-time low. But because of the post-Covid collapse in vetting and rise of health-related welfare claims, millions of workers could take home more from welfare than wages after tax. This is an outrageous state of affairs. The system must stop writing off thousands every day and incentives to work need to be restored to end this ruinous waste of human potential.
The party's newly-appointed Shadow Chancellor, Robert Jenrick, delivered a keynote speech in London outlining policies aimed at tackling what he described as the "ballooning benefits bill" and the "managed decline" under Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Jenrick said Reform UK would reinstate in-person assessments and require clinical diagnoses to prevent misuse of disability benefits.
The Conservatives are calling for a proposed renovation of the Houses of Parliament to be paused and "refocused" over concerns about costs potentially running into the tens of billions. MPs have been presented with proposals to refurbish the ailing Palace of Westminster, including a plan that could cost almost 40bn and take 61 years to complete. The project team has warned delaying the restoration of the historic building, which costs 1.5m a week to maintain, would lead to "an expensive managed decline of the Palace".
Meg Hillier, the chair of the all-party House of Commons Treasury committee, said the chancellor should make clear her long-term plans for the 6bn-a-year Send bill as uncertainty grows over how it will be accounted for at the end of the decade. Reeves, who is due to appear before the committee next month, said in a letterto MPs that she plans to delay a decision until next year.
