Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt will travel to New York later today, following two days of high-level meetings in Washington with Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Chief of Staff to the President General John Kelly and Adviser to the President Jared Kushner.

The Foreign Secretary discussed a range of foreign policy priorities including: Iran and Russia; ways to support UN efforts to bring peace to Yemen; progress on the Middle East Peace Process; and how to ensure the UK-US alliance grows even stronger after the UK’s exit from the European Union.

Mr Hunt also met a number of US diplomats expelled from Russia following the decision by Washington to expel 60 Russian diplomats as part of the coordinated response to the Salisbury attacks.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said:

The United States is our closest ally and I was delighted to meet Vice President Pence, Secretary Pompeo, and other key figures in the US administration to discuss the foreign policy challenges we face together. The UK and US, and our joint defence of our shared values, will always be crucial to maintaining the international rules-based system that has kept us safe for decades.

Our discussions showed real enthusiasm from the US administration, from the President down, for a UK/US Free Trade Agreement to be reached as soon as possible after we leave the EU, something that will benefit businesses on both sides of the Atlantic.

We are enormously grateful for the solidarity shown by the US as they stood with us when a chemical weapon was inexcusably used in Salisbury earlier this year. Today I was able personally to thank US diplomats expelled from Russia in retaliation.

Further information

• Follow the Foreign Secretary on Twitter @Jeremy_Hunt and Facebook

• Follow the Foreign Office on Twitter @foreignoffice and Facebook

• Follow the Foreign Office on Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn

Foreign Office Minister of State for Africa Harriett Baldwin said:

I congratulate President Keïta of the Republic of Mali on his election success and look forward to continuing to work with his government on issues that matter to both our countries. These elections were conducted despite challenging security conditions and terrorist attempts to disrupt the process.

We urge all candidates and political stakeholders to maintain a peaceful atmosphere and settle disputes through legal and constitutional means.

The UK continues to support Mali and its people in overcoming the challenges the country faces. We urge President Keïta to build on recent positive steps in the peace process in order to secure lasting peace and stability in the country and to improve the lives of all Malian people, including those facing increasing insecurity in the central region.

Further information

• Follow Foreign Office Minister Harriett Baldwin on Twitter @hbaldwin

• Follow the Foreign Office on Twitter @foreignoffice and Facebook

In September 2018 the Cultural and Education Section of the British Embassy is supporting the participation of five Russian specialists working in the field of inclusive art in Unlimited and Unlimited: the Symposium in London.

The Southbank Centre’s Unlimited Festival celebrates the artistic vision and originality of disabled artists from the UK and beyond. The programme comprises Unlimited commissions alongside other works from the UK and overseas and encompasses a variety of art forms including dance, theatre, visual arts and music.

Unlimited: the Symposium is a disabled-led, two-day discussion event aimed at both a national and international audience. It takes place in the lead up to the Unlimited Festival and will explore art and equality, the pace of change and whether new technology enables or creates more barriers.

As well as attending discussions and performances, delegates will have great opportunities to meet colleagues from all over the world.

The Russian delegation will include:

• Larisa Nikitina, curator of educational programmes at the Centre for Creative Projects “Inclusion”. The Centre’s mission is the development of inclusive projects in Russia. In 2017 “Inclusion” co-organised the international premiere of “In Touch” at the Royal National Theatre in London with deafblind as well as sighted and hearing actors.

• Ekaterina Arkhipova, manager of public programmes, and Liudmila Luchkova, inclusive programme manager at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Garage was one of the first museums in Russia to launch a department of inclusive programmes and since 2016 it has regularly organised special events for deaf and hard of hearing, blind and partially sighted visitors and people with intellectual disabilities.

• Elizaveta Siomicheva, PR manager at Upsala-Circus, a unique socio-cultural project in Russia that works with children and teenagers with special needs as well as with children and youth at risk.

• Evgenia Kiseleva, head of inclusive programmes and curator at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. In 2016 the museum launched “Accessible Museum”, a programme including exhibitions and educational activities, as well as events catering for visitors with different capabilities. The goal is not only to initiate special projects, but also to increase the accessibility of existing programmes.

Some £13 million of Home Office funding has been awarded to projects which support vulnerable children, by ensuring they have positive adult role models in their lives such as youth workers, police officers, nurses and other professionals.

Eleven local authorities have been allocated a share of the Trusted Relationship Fund – a scheme that attempts to intervene early if a child is at risk of abusive predators or being drawn into criminality, such as county lines, by helping foster close relationships with trusted adults in the community.

It comes after a Home Office-commissioned review by the Early Intervention Foundation found that a trusted relationship with an adult is an important part of programmes to support vulnerable children, and that the lack of trusted relationships is consistently cited as a contributing factor in cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation.

Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability, Victoria Atkins, said:

It is awful to think so many children have to tackle life without a strong adult figure they can confide in and that this may leave them vulnerable to predatory criminals and violence as well as exploitation and abuse.

The government is absolutely determined to help, which is why the Trusted Relationships Fund will support at-risk children through projects across the country.

Early intervention is so important to give vulnerable young people the best chance in life and we will make sure that those most at risk will have a positive adult in their lives.

Yesterday (Tuesday 21 August) the Minister visited one of the successful projects in Rotherham. The project, commissioned by Rotherham Metropolitan District Council and delivered by Barnardo’s, sees young people who may be at risk of exploitation and abuse, work with a trusted adult in order to raise their self-esteem and boost their resilience against people wanting to exploit them.

Barnardo’s Chief Executive, Javed Khan, said:

This new government funding for vital early intervention preventative work will allow us to continue to build on what we have already achieved and, working closely alongside our partners, support more children and young people to escape sexual exploitation.

It will also give us the opportunity to support and protect vulnerable children who are being exposed to other forms of exploitation, such as criminal exploitation by gangs and peer relationship abuse. Barnardo’s is committed to breaking the damaging cycle of exploitation and violence that young people can get caught in.

Other successful projects, in areas including London, the Midlands and Greater Manchester, demonstrated that they will help young people in ways such as:

• delivering youth work on the streets to draw children away from threats such as child sexual exploitation or county lines
• working with expelled youngsters to divert them from harm and criminality back towards education
• providing specialist support to children with special educational needs, disabilities and others at risk of being drawn into sexual exploitation
• working with parents and foster carers to improve family relationships and build trust with young people experiencing abusive relationships

As well as Rotherham Council, other successful local authorities include Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Hounslow Council, North Yorkshire County Council & York Council, Ealing Council and North East Lincolnshire Council.

Bradford Council, Hackney Council, North Somerset District Council, Barnet Council and Northampton Borough Council will also benefit from the funding.

Read information about each project.

• Three new Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber Security Research recognised, including the first in Wales.
• Total number of Centres in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland boosted to 17.

Three UK universities have been recognised as Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber Security Research (ACE-CSR), highlighting the country is leading the way in cyber security skills.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESPRC) have identified the University of Kent, King’s College London, and Cardiff University as having first-rate research with scale and impact.

The universities will now join 14 other institutions in a scheme forming part of the Government’s National Cyber Security Strategy, which is making the UK the safest place to be online and helping to support the country’s thriving digital economy.

The universities will now have the opportunity to bid for funding to develop cutting-edge research in cyber security, including at Doctoral level, as well as attend annual conferences and workshops.

The scheme aims to create a better understanding of the strength of the UK’s academic capability in cyber security and identify areas where there are research opportunities or technical gaps. It makes collaboration between academia, business and government easier, and helps make sure cutting-edge research is turned into practical products and services. This includes developing tools to tackle mass marketing fraud online and better understand cyber criminals.

Minister for Digital Margot James said:

These universities are doing fantastic research in cyber security and they are rightly being recognised for their pioneering work.

We have some of the best minds in the world working in the field and thanks to this scheme they can now help shape our National Cyber Security Strategy and develop the talent and services of tomorrow.

Chris Ensor, Deputy Director for Cyber Security Skills and Growth at the NCSC, said:

The UK has world-class universities carrying out cutting edge research into all areas of cyber security.

It’s fantastic to see three more universities recognised as Academic Centres of Excellence and I’m especially pleased that we now have centres in all home nations.

The NCSC looks forward to collaborating with these institutions to make the UK the safest place to live and work online.

Professor Pete Burnap, Professor of Data Science & Cybersecurity, and Director of the Airbus Centre of Excellence in Cybersecurity Analytics at Cardiff University said:

We are delighted to receive this recognition as it evidences our long track-record of research excellence in cyber security.

Our core identity is the interdisciplinary fusion of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, a concept we call Cyber Security Analytics. AI is at the heart of the UK government’s industrial strategy and our aim is to innovate with AI to improve automated cyber threat intelligence and support decision making and policy responses to make the UK more secure for individuals, business and the government.

We are proud to be the first Welsh university to be recognised by NCSC for our cyber research capability, and we hope to build on the impressive expertise that already exists across the region between academia, government and business.

Dr Jose M. Such, Director of the Centre, and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Informatics at King’s College London said:

We are thrilled to be recognised for the high-quality socio-technical cyber security research we conduct at King’s College London. This recognition acknowledges the critical and diverse mass of researchers working on this area at King’s from different but complementary angles and points of view.

Our research focuses on three main research themes and their interrelationship: the use of AI for cyber security together with the cyber security of AI itself, the theoretical aspects of cyber security like verification and testing, and the socio-political and strategic aspects of cyber security.

Shujun Li, Professor of Cyber Security and Director of the Kent Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Cyber Security (KirCCS) at the University of Kent, said:

We are excited to be given the ACE-CSR status as an acknowledgement of the excellent research in cyber security at the University of Kent. Our research is truly interdisciplinary drawing on the expertise of colleagues from computer science and engineering as well as wider disciplines such as psychology, law, business and sociology. Our ambition is to have one of the largest and most productive cyber security research centres in the UK by 2022 as well as helping to grow the next-generation cyber security researchers.

The ACE-CSR programme is supported by Government’s £1.9 billion National Cyber Security Strategy (NCSS) 2016-2021.

Notes to editors

List of institutions that are recognised as Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber Security Research are:

• University of Birmingham
• University of Bristol
• University of Cambridge
• Cardiff University
• University of Edinburgh
• University of Kent
• Imperial College London
• King’s College London
• Lancaster University
• Newcastle University
• University of Oxford
• Queen’s University Belfast
• Royal Holloway, University of London
• University of Southampton
• University of Surrey
• University of Warwick

• University College London

• The universities will be recognised as Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber Security Research until June 2022.

• Our consultation on developing the UK cyber security profession closes at
  5pm on 31 August 2018.

• The National Cyber Security Strategy includes a commitment to develop the cyber security profession in the UK. As part of this work the Government is consulting on how to develop the right skills, capabilities and professionalism for the industry. It includes a clear definition of objectives and proposes the creation of a new UK Cyber Security Council to coordinate delivery.