Supporters of keeping Scotland in the UK were gearing up yesterday to mount a fightback as buoyant separatists claimed they had the momentum ahead of next week’s referendum on independence.
Following a poll on Sunday that put the pro-independence “Yes” camp ahead for the first time in the lengthy campaign, unionists are planning this week to unveil detailed plans for greater fiscal autonomy for Scotland if it votes on Sept. 18 to retain the 300-year-old union with England.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, who spent the weekend with Queen Elizabeth II at her Scottish summer retreat, is to try to convince skeptics that Edinburgh would swiftly get more powers following a “No” vote.
Meanwhile the Labour opposition is to deploy some of its biggest names in a bid to halt the apparent nationalist surge.
Party leader Ed Miliband is expected to appear on a platform with his Scottish predecessor, former British prime minister Gordon Brown, for the first time since the failed 2010 general election campaign.
Meanwhile, Labour finance spokesman Ed Balls, due to speak in the oil city of Aberdeen, urged Scots not to vote for independence as a protest against Cameron’s Conservative-led UK government.
Cameron’s center-right Tories are a distant third in the Scottish Parliament behind the separatist, left-of-center Scottish National Party (SNP) of First Minister Alex Salmond, and center-left Labour.
The moves come after a YouGov poll in the Sunday Times newspaper gave the pro-independence “Yes” camp 51 percent support compared with the “No” camp’s 49 percent, excluding undecided voters. Six percent said they had not made up their minds.
The “No” camp had hitherto been ahead in the polls, though surveys show the gap has shrunk in recent weeks.
Any vote for Scotland to leave the UK would raise questions about Britain’s standing in the international community.
Scotland represents one-third of Britain’s landmass and is home to Britain’s prestige submarine-based Trident nuclear deterrent, which the SNP says must be out of an independent Scotland by 2020.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
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