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Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

Future Works has come up with plans for a 14-mile Peak District tunnel

The idea to build a tunnel under the Pennines and connect Manchester and Sheffield resurfaced earlier this year. Now the steps towards it becoming a reality have been laid out.

An organisation called Future Works has devised a strategy to build a 14-mile tunnel beneath the Peak District mountains. The scheme is estimated to cut journey times between Manchester and Sheffield by 30 minutes and take traffic away from the National Park.

This comes 10 years on from when the government originally looked into the idea.

The Department for Transport’s (DfT) own report highlighted the benefits of the scheme would include a major environmental and economic boost. The report added that the scheme could be a ‘catalyst to explore further improvements in east-west connectivity, including linking the international ports on Merseyside and Humberside’.

However, the idea came to nothing as DfT decided it would be too expensive to complete – around £10bn. But Future Works believe it can be done for just £2bn.

The organisation, co-founded by Michael Dnes, wants to build the dual carriageway as well as a railway line – inspired by engineers who’ve done similar work in Norway. The Norwegians built the world’s longest road tunnel, the 24.5km Lærdal in Norway, for around £130m.

Despite the excitement of Future Works seemingly bringing the project back to life, the idea remains just an idea. The local MP, Jonathan Reynolds, has long advocated for better transport connectivity around the eastern corner of Tameside.

The villages of Hollingworth and Mottram have long been the victims of queueing traffic through their centres. They are right at the crossroads on Tameside and Derbyshire, where the Woodhead Pass and Snake Pass meet the Greater Manchester road network.

Mr Reynolds was instrumental in securing the Mottram bypass scheme currently under construction. But he believes Future Works’ plan now needs to undergo work to understand if it is actually deliverable and the actual benefits it could bring.

Jonathan Reynolds, MP for Stalybridge and Hyde, said: “Residents in Hollingworth have been waiting for years to see real progress on the issue of traffic passing through the village, so any credible proposal that could reduce congestion and improve connectivity deserves to be looked at seriously.

“I’ve been keen to support Future Works by speaking to stakeholders, and the priority now is to undertake the detailed work needed to establish whether it can be delivered, how it could be financed, and what benefits it could bring to local communities and the wider region.”

The idea would see one of the current Woodhead tunnels, which currently transport electricity lines for the national grid, for the new road and railway.

Rather than using the standard British approach of a tunnel-boring machine, Future Works has looked into the drill-and-blast method applied to tunnels in Norway. This system replaces giant machinery with more traditional mining techniques, the natural strength of the rock and small expert crews.

Although this would not work in many areas of the UK, the expert teams believe this ‘drill-and-blast’ method could work in this area due to the geology of the Pennines. This is because the tunnels built in Norway go through mountains with a similar rock type.

The previous model of going for direct government funding through the Department for Transport never got going after appetite for big road projects waned, according to Mr Dnes. So his team believes the project could be funded by either big pension funds or the local authorities and paid back over time through tolls on the tunnel.

Mr Dnes explained that tolls could actually work out cheaper than paying for fuel costs to go around an alternative route, particularly if the vehicle is larger, such as a HGV.

A spokesperson for Future Works said previously: “High demand for the route means that the project could pay for itself, without the need for Westminster funding.

“Scandinavian tunnels are often owned by local councils, who recover the costs through tolls. Equally, northern pension funds have hundreds of billions in investment capital that could be mobilised to build the project.

“Many options exist – public, private and partnership. Future Works was set up by infrastructure experts Michael Dnes and Alex Griffiths, with a combined expertise in more than £100bn of infrastructure projects. They aim to create a shovel-ready scheme, and to bring this through the planning system faster than the 10+ year processes that have become the norm in UK planning.

“Work could begin before the end of the decade, with the road and railway open in the mid-2030s.”

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Puzzle number 936 of The New York Times’ Strands game took a notably different turn Friday, trading the format’s usual wordplay and thematic red herrings for a grid built around basic multiplication, giving solvers a puzzle that felt more like a flashback to primary school math class than the typical vocabulary-driven Strands challenge.

Strands presents players with a six-by-eight grid of letters and asks them to find a set of words connected by a hidden theme, tracing each word in a continuous line that can bend around corners as it moves through the grid. One special word, known as the spangram, always touches two opposite sides of the board and summarizes what the rest of the puzzle’s theme words have in common. Players can also tap or drag to select letters, and non-spangram theme words remain highlighted in blue once correctly identified.

For those still working through Friday’s puzzle, the theme centers on numbers, specifically the kind produced by multiplying a whole number by itself. Every non-spangram answer in Friday’s grid is a number written out in words, and each of those numbers happens to be a perfect square. One outlet described the day’s theme hint plainly as “these are squares,” while another characterized the official in-game theme clue as “1×1, etc.” Today’s spangram itself runs 13 letters long and is positioned horizontally across the board.

SPOILER WARNING: The full solution to Friday’s Strands puzzle follows below. Stop reading now if you’d rather work through the grid on your own.

Today’s spangram answer is SQUARE NUMBER, directly naming the mathematical theme running through the rest of the puzzle. The confirmed non-spangram theme words include FOUR, NINE, TWENTY FIVE, THIRTY SIX and EIGHTY ONE, each representing a perfect square, the result of multiplying a whole number by itself: 2×2, 3×3, 5×5, 6×6 and 9×9, respectively.

Puzzle guides covering Friday’s grid described it as an unusually direct and approachable Strands puzzle compared with the format’s typical entries, since the theme rewards basic multiplication recall rather than the more associative or lateral thinking that Strands puzzles often demand. One outlet framed the puzzle as proof that the Strands format can flex into math-based themes without losing the puzzle’s underlying character, even as it noted this kind of overtly literal theme remains relatively rare for the game.

Strands, created by The New York Times as a spatial twist on the traditional word search format, continues to operate in what the newspaper has described as a beta phase, even as the game has steadily grown in popularity alongside the Times’ other daily word games. A new puzzle appears at midnight local time each day, meaning solvers in different time zones begin working through that day’s grid at staggered points relative to players elsewhere around the world.

Strategy guides accompanying Friday’s puzzle noted that players who find themselves stuck can tap any of several designated clue words to unlock the game’s built-in hint system, a feature intended to nudge solvers toward the puzzle’s theme without immediately revealing the full solution. Guides also reminded players that theme words in Strands fill the entire board without any overlap between words, meaning every letter in the grid ultimately belongs to exactly one theme word or the spangram.

Puzzle number 936 followed Thursday’s Strands puzzle, themed around locations just outside one’s front door, continuing the game’s pattern of rotating through a wide range of everyday and conceptual themes from one day to the next. Players tracking their personal performance on Friday’s puzzle can compare notes with friends and fellow solvers, given how quickly Strands has built a dedicated following since its launch, joining Wordle, Connections and the Mini Crossword among the Times’ most widely played daily word games.

With Friday’s math-themed puzzle now solved, players will have an entirely new grid and hidden theme to work through when Saturday’s edition of Strands resets at midnight local time, continuing the daily puzzle’s steady climb in popularity as one of the newspaper’s newer, but increasingly essential, word game offerings.

Ione Wells speaks to Roelf Meyer, South Africa’s new ambassador to the United States. In the 1990s, Meyer was one of the leading negotiators in the talks that helped bring apartheid to an end.

Now he takes up his new post amid a serious rupture in relations with the US President Trump has cut aid, expelled the previous South African ambassador and offered refugee status to white Afrikaners he says are fleeing persecution, claiming the community faces “genocide”.

The South African government rejects that allegation. Meyer, himself an Afrikaner, explains why he believes Trump has been given the wrong picture and how his experience negotiating the end of apartheid could help repair relations with Washington.

“The notion of a mass attack on the Afrikaner was misrepresented by those that might have conveyed the message. I mean, I’m an Afrikaner from South Africa myself. And I can say that I’ve never experienced something of that kind. We found it strange. So the source is misrepresented, unfortunately, something that just doesn’t exist,” says Meyer.

(Photo: Roelf Meyer, South Africa’s ambassador to the US, wears a navy blazer with a white shirt and light blue tie. He has short white hair. Credit: Getty Images)

The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC, including episodes with Sundar Pichai and Julia Gillard.

You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presenter: Ione Wells
Producer: Osman Iqbal
Editor: Damon Rose

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Mark Beyer and Justin Fris discuss the business aspects and benefits behind Saturday’s AFL Grand Final between the Fremantle Dockers and Brisbane Lions. 

Plus: Satterley appoints Ben Rosser, restructures; Higher interest rates needed, say top economists; Freo final to help revive country pub. 

Cyber-criminals who hacked the FBI say they have extremely sensitive medical data for thousands of its special agents.

BBC News has seen samples of the stolen “fitness-for-work” medical examinations, which contain information such as blood and urine test results, and doctors’ notes mentioning conditions such as a “shellfish and banana allergy”.

The records include agents’ full names and addresses, as well as references to medical concerns including ‘blood in the urine’ and ‘high cholesterol’.

Experts say the hack – which the FBI is investigating – could leave agents vulnerable to scams, blackmail and targeted attacks, as well as help criminals impersonate law enforcement officers.

“The list maps thousands of agents against their medical and fitness records,” said Etay Maor, vice-president of threat intelligence at Cato Networks.

“Passwords can be reset if stolen, but medical records cannot, so once this data is out, it stays compromised for good. That permanence, applied across an entire workforce, is what makes this leak so serious.”

The FBI has not responded to requests for comment. However, on Wednesday it acknowledged the breach and said it was “aggressively investigating” how it happened.

The cyber-criminal group ShinyHunters claims it breached FBI systems on Monday, and later posted details of the attack on its darknet site.

The group also shared samples of the alleged stolen data with reporters, along with an extortion demand.

Unusually, the hackers are not demanding money. Instead, they are seeking a retraction of an FBI advisory published in May, which they claim “offended” them.

The samples shared with journalists appear genuine and include names, addresses, phone numbers, badge numbers, job titles and information about spouses.

The records appear to relate to thousands of agents, including senior officials such as deputy directors.

Professor Ciaran Martin, the former head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, has described the hack – if confirmed – “as serious as it gets when it comes to data breaches.”

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Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

U.S. airlines waived change fees for flights Friday through Sunday ahead of a nor’easter that federal forecasters warn will bring high winds and rainfall with the potential for dangerous flooding.

As of Friday morning, there were minimal delays around the Northeast ahead of the storm and few cancelations set for the weekend.

Carriers will often cancel a chunk, if not most of their schedules, during severe winter storms or hurricanes to ensure planes, passengers and crews aren’t out of place, but airlines are still assessing the the nor’easter’s potential path.

American Airlines, United Airlines and JetBlue Airways said customers can change their flights for a host of airports in the New York City area, Boston and smaller New England airports, without paying a change fee or difference in fare if they can fly anytime before mid-next week.

The potential weekend disruptions come after an equipment outage on Monday forced carriers to cancel hundreds of flights bound for the New York area and Philadelphia.