Since 2010, one in five firefighter jobs has disappeared alongside 30% funding cuts — all while climate breakdown brings record blazes and flooding. It’s time to fund our fire service properly, writes FBU general secretary STEVE WRIGHT

While pundits concentrate on noisy clashes between Donald Trump and Angela Merkel in Brussels, few have noticed that Colombia is joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) as a “global partner,” the first Latin American country to do so.
In doing so, it joins eight other “global partner” countries in Nato: Afghanistan, Australia, Iraq, Japan, South Korea, Mongolia, New Zealand and Pakistan.
Colombia has been seeking to join Nato since 2006. As a stepping stone, it signed an information sharing and security agreement in 2013 and in 2017 a partnership and co-operation programme.



